Thermospheric cooling under RCP8.5 and high solar activity due to carbon dioxide increases only, select years from 1975-2095

This dataset contains WACCM-X model results under RCP8.5 (Representative Concentration Pathway) carbon dioxide increases and high solar activity (F10.7 = 200 sfu). These cover ground level to a pressure level of 4e-10 hPa (~300 km altitude) on a global 144x96 longitude-latitude grid .

Data is given in daily instantaneous (.h2.) and monthly average (.h0.) files in the netCDF format. Default WACCM-X outputs remain, along with the following additional variables:

'PS' - Surface Pressure

'Z3' - Geopotential Height (above sea level)

'T' - Temperature

'U' - Zonal Wind

'V' - Meridional Wind

'CO2' - Carbon Dioxide Concentration

'CO' - Carbon Monoxide Concentration

'NO' - Nitric Oxide Concentration

'H2O' - Water Vapour Concentration

'O' - Atomic Oxygen Concentration

More detail on each variable is given within the netCDF files and the readme file.

64 month runs from edited initial files at 10 year intervals from 2015 to 2095 under RCP8.5. There is also a 28 month 1975 run and 64 month 2000 run. All of these cyclically repeat the initial year. These are separated into individual folders with the RCP8.5 CO2 concentration listed. The first 4 months of each of these datasets have been ignored in processing as the model spins up, but are included here for completeness.

This data was collected to understand the density drop at low earth orbit altitudes as carbon dioxide concentrations increase.

Date (Publication): 2021-12-03T15:05:09

Date (Creation): 2021-12-03T15:05:09

Citation identifier: https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/09198c58032d4b8197fd7c6748b92785

Citation identifier: NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis / 09198c58032d4b8197fd7c6748b92785

Citation identifier: doi / 10.5285/09198c58032d4b8197fd7c6748b92785

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Unavailable	Brown, Matthew	Unavailable	Author
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	Custodian
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	Distributor
Unavailable	Brown, Matthew	Unavailable	Principal investigator
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	pointofContact
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	Publisher

Maintenance and update frequency: Not planned

Update scope: Dataset

Keywords

thermospheric
cooling
model

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

atmospheric conditions

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Public data: access to these data is available to both registered and non-registered users.

Use constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Under the following licence http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/, appropriate use of these data may fall under any use. This message is intended as guidance, always read the full licence. When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.

Spatial representation type: Grid

Language: English

Topic category

Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere

Begin date: 1975-01-01T00:00:00

End date: 2095-12-31T00:00:00

Unique resource identifier: WGS 84

Distribution format

Name	Version
Data are netCDF formatted

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/09198c58032d4b8197fd7c6748b92785	CEDA Data Catalogue Page

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://data.ceda.ac.uk/badc/deposited2021/ThermoCooling_SA_WACCMX/data/	DOWNLOAD

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Conformance result

Title: Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Date (Publication): 2010-12-08

Statement: Input data other than default is obtained from the subversion input data repository at https://svn-ccsm-inputdata.cgd.ucar.edu/trunk/

These files changed in user_nl_cam include

solar_parms_file = '/.../inputdata/atm/waccm/phot/wa_smin_quiet_c071210.nc'

srf_emis_specifier = 'CH2O -> /.../inputdata/atm/cam/chem/2000-2100_RCP45/IPCC_emissions_houw_CH2O_2000-2100_1.9x2.5.nc',

'CO -> /.../inputdata/atm/cam/chem/2000-2100_RCP45/IPCC_emissions_houw_CO_2000-2100_1.9x2.5.nc',

'NO -> /.../inputdata/atm/cam/chem/2000-2100_RCP45/IPCC_emissions_houw_NOx_2000-2100_1.9x2.5.nc'

aero_file = 'aero_rcp45_v1_1.9x2.5_L26_1995-2105_c100316.nc'

solar_data_file = '/.../inputdata/atm/cam/solar/spectral_irradiance_Lean_1950-2100_daily_CCMI_Leap_c150727.nc'

1975 run used all default input files.

Initial conditions are those of the default year 2000 run, with CO2 and CO concentrations in the initial files edited as described within the paper (Brown et al, 2021).

The files uploaded here are the raw files output by WACCM-X with no editing.

Metadata

File identifier: 09198c58032d4b8197fd7c6748b92785 XML

Metadata language: English

Character set: UTF8

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Date stamp: 2026-03-09T03:22:49

Metadata standard name: UK GEMINI

Metadata standard version: 2.3

Metadata author

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	Point of contact

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